


It's Not With A Crash

by minyrrds



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, M/M, post-trk, the death is canon compliant?? sorta yes???, there was just so many feelings, this is so sad im so sorry omg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 10:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5452760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minyrrds/pseuds/minyrrds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not with a crash, not with a bang, not with anything that Gansey dies. He dies without fanfare one morning in late March. Blue on her knees shouting, Ronan pumping life back into his chest, and Adam stock-still feet behind him. But there’s nothing any of them can do, and he dies with pained breath and a fading smile.<br/>“<i>Onwards and upwards</i>.”</p><p>(What happens when Gansey is gone and there's nothing for them anymore.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not With A Crash

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first TRC fic I've ever written and the second fic I've written in the last four years, but [babs](http://merry-taire.tumblr.com) kept sending me sad headcanons abt the Glendower Gang post Gansey's death, and I needed to put my feelings out in something more cohesive so here we are. 
> 
> (Fun fact, I wrote this to the [song that Maggie Stiefvater wrote Adam's last scene to](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j4mxnjOcug).)

_And you fight for the heat all summer_  
_You were drawn by something you can't see_  
_But the land behind you forgotten_  
_There's no memory I see_

It’s not with a crash, not with a bang, not with anything that Gansey dies. He dies without fanfare one morning in late March. Blue on her knees shouting, Ronan pumping life back into his chest, and Adam stock-still feet behind him. But there’s nothing any of them can do, and he dies with pained breath and a fading smile.  
_“Onwards and upwards.”_

Blue cries and kisses him; there’s no point in waiting anymore.

His lips are cold and Blue’s tears are salty, and Noah cries silently next to her, fingers interlocked with hers. Adam finds Ronan and clings to him before falling down to the ground and sucking in air like a drowning man. He cries the most out of any of them, shaking into Ronan’s shoulder and staining his shirt. Ronan rocks back and forth, cradling Adam like some precious thing and cries like something raw. The sheer pain of it too much for any of them to take on their own.

Afterwards, Noah is nowhere to be found; they don’t see him again. 

When they found Glendower, there was a grave, and that was all there was. Gansey tore through the cave, begging pleading with whatever god was out there for there to be something more; there had to be something else. But there wasn’t. In the end there was a stone tomb, and grey bones. That’s when Adam knows they’ve lost him; Gansey is never quite the same after that. Gansey was never quite theirs after that. 

They all go to the funeral, dressed in various shades of appropriateness. Blue in a shredded gown, Ronan in the same suit he wore to his father’s funeral, and Adam in a suit he found on his bed one morning tailored exactly to his size feeling of sorrow and pained dreams. They stay in the back and dig him up hours later in the dark and early spring rain. They drive home in the Pig, Blue sleeping in the back seat and Adam gripping Ronan’s hand over the clutch. 

When they get home, they drive to the church and bury him with Noah’s bones. His body is cold, his eyes closed in painless sleep. None of them speak as they dig the grave; no one says a word as they lower him into the ground, pressing Noah’s bones against his side. Ronan fills in the grave on his own, stepping back as Adam gives them a bit of Cableswater and Blue gives them a quiet prayer of her own. They sprinkle handfuls of dirt over the packed earth. Blue places flowers on their grave and curls in on herself when Adam reaches out for her. He finds Ronan’s hand in his, and watches Ronan walks toward her, tears clear in his eyes.  
_“Maggot.”_  
Blue’s scream when she turns to him is enough to make the rotting walls of the church shake and when she starts to punch him in the chest with all she’s got, Adam can’t find it in himself to be surprised. When she shakes and falls forward, Ronan catches her and pulls Adam close. They have each other still, at least. Adam thinks for a moment on how fleeting this moment is; nothing is the same after that.

Gansey was what held them together; he was what they had. With him gone, it hurts too much to stay together; it’s too much of a reminder. Blue stops coming around Monmouth. Adam gets into Yale. The world goes on, and yet it doesn’t. 

300 Fox Way becomes too much. Too crowded, too loud, too filled with memories of Gansey. Blue plots her escape and collects her paycheck from Nino’s in a savings account she doesn’t tell Maura about. She buys a map and picks a place out west, far, far away from Henrietta. Far away from Gansey and his dreams, from Monmouth, the Pig, from Ronan Lynch and his cruel smile and Adam Parrish and his kind hands. Maura finds her days before she leaves and presses a small envelope in her hands, and a well worn tarot deck.  
_“It isn’t much, but it’ll get you there.”_  
She cries when Blue leaves, but doesn’t try to stop her. She couldn’t keep Blue even if she wanted to. 

The day before Adam leaves for Yale, Ronan shows up on his door and kisses him with everything he’s got left in him, fisting his hand in Adam’s shirt. He’s tired of waiting.

Ronan makes Adam say it, choked and mindless with his hands down Adams pants and Adams lips on his neck. They can’t keep it, and it wont be theirs for long, but for a moment they are skin on skin and grasping at happiness. In the morning when they wake Ronan leans over and kisses him soft. Adam is gone before noon, and Ronan heads for a tattoo parlor. 

Weeks later when his skin has healed he runs his fingers over the _Excelsior_ on his ribs and tells himself not to cry. He doesn’t dream anymore. 

In the end, it was a single hornet. Just one. Buried deep over his heart, weeks after the cave. Gansey almost looked relieved; there was nothing left for him, he had lost his purpose. With Glendower found, he was left without a cause, and without hope. His eyes fluttered and he slumped forward, and Blue was the first one to notice, the first one to start shouting. Adam jams the epi-pen into Gansey’s leg but they knew it wasn’t enough. Ronan’s voice breaks as he bargains for Gansey’s life; he keeps pumping long after it’s clear he’s gone. No one has it in them to tell him to stop. 

Cableswater disappears without Adam to tend to it and Ronan to dream in it. The day Blue goes looking for it, she doesn’t come back. 

He left a will, they find out later. Adam gets a call from Helen halfway into his fall semester, and drives down to the house in Virginia to see the assets distributed. Blue comes with longer hair and chipped nails, Ronan with his head shorn and Chainsaw on his shoulder. Gansey’s lawyer informs them that Gansey had the will drawn up that winter as a contingency plan, that they are the sole recipients. Adam gets the Pig with specific instructions to look under the driver seat. Ronan gets Monmouth. Blue gets his mint plant and Gansey’s journal, and is his inheritance. She tries to give the money back but the lawyer just thanks them for their time and Ronan makes her sign the papers. 

They all drive back to Monmouth to pick up their respective gifts. There’s an odd sense of closure, returning to where it all began. Gansey’s things are all the way they were the morning he died. Nothing moved, nothing changed. The mint plant still alive partly by sheer force of will and partially because Ronan can’t bear to see another part of Gansey die and waters it every day. The bed is still unmade and his journal is left on the ground by the miniature model of Henrietta. His spare glasses sit on his desk and his backpack is slumped on the chair next to it. It’s almost too much for them to look at. 

Ronan stashes the deed under his bed, angrily shoving it behind the headboard before seeing the note on the back in Gansey’s scrawl.  
_Curam istum. Sollicite cura teipsum._  
Ronan snorts and barks out a laugh. It helps a little. 

Adam finds the envelope hidden under the seat. There’s $10,000 cash and a note on the inside of the envelope.  
_I’m not leaving you the money; I just forgot I put it here._  
_For emergencies_ is crossed out underneath it. Adam never spends the money. 

Blue opens the journal and flips to the last page.  
_Jane,_  
_I love you. I wish I could have kissed you._  
_-Dick_  
Adam finds her quietly crying not too long after, cradling the mint plant. He rubs small circles on her back and drops a kiss on her head before looking for Ronan. 

When they kiss, it’s not the same. Ronan finds the _Excelsior_ hidden behind Adam’s left ear and kisses it softly before showing him his own. Adam laughs without humor and bites the skin over it; Ronan hopes for a bruise. Blue walks in and looks at them with swollen eyes, gripping her arms and laughing a little before pulling up her sleeve and pressing her thumb hard against her wrist, her own little _Excelsior_ in Gansey’s ridiculous scrawl out from hiding. They pull her close and she starts breathing for the first time in a while. 

They leave each other with watery goodbyes and no promises of seeing each other again. 

**Author's Note:**

> The latin translates to: Take care of this place. Take care of yourself. 
> 
> I'm [here on tumblr](http://tooruoikawa.co.vu) if you wanna say hi!  
> Feel free to send me or [Sarah](http://merry-taire.tumblr.com) head canons abt ur Glendower Gang feelings.


End file.
